Of Chickens and Fossilized Bones
by Cottonmouth25
Summary: After the dragon riders come back to the Edge after a long mission to the European mainland, they bring along a discovery that challenges their knowledge of dragon evolution, and causes Tuffnut to realize Chicken's true identity. Oneshot, RttE season 6 spoilers, nothing but silliness. Now with deleted scene!
1. Chapter 1

**Of Chickens and Fossilized Bones**

 **Salutations, greetings, and many great hellos!**

 **Tuffnut and Chicken for life! This was inspired by the great fanfic "This Story Is For The Birds" by Emachinescat, as well as the intro to the final season of RTTE.**

 **I do not own HTTYD or anything associated with it.**

-.-.-.-.-.

Ruffnut and Tuffnut Thorston remembered the day when Hiccup and the other riders left on an urgent mission. It had been two weeks ago when the leader of the Dragon Riders, with _no_ shortage of reluctance, passed off the duties of managing the Edge to the twins.

Allowing a pair of teenagers that had time and time again proved themselves to be completely idiotic, irresponsible, destructive, mischievous, and _a thousand_ other things to take charge of the Edge and keep it in good condition was… well, not a decision Hiccup would have made if he had any other choice. Even Ruff and Tuff could see that. The last time they'd been in charge of the Edge, it had almost burned to the ground. As much as they liked to pretend that they'd enjoyed the chaos, the truth of the matter was, well, they hadn't.

So when Hiccup approached them, told them about the mission, and explained why they were the only two that could afford to stay behind and protect the base from Johann and the dragon hunters, Ruff and Tuff simply nodded and promised that they'd take better care of their home than last time.

The Thorston siblings were smarter than a lot of people, including their friends, believed. No matter how many times Hiccup explained it to them – and he made sure to repeat himself _a lot_ so that he was absolutely _sure_ they'd get it – they understood why they were the ones that were being left behind.

Hiccup was the leader.

Astrid was the most skilled at pretty much everything.

Snotlout had the firepower.

Fishlegs had the dragon knowledge.

Heather had the experience.

And Dagur… they needed to keep an eye on him, even after he'd proven himself to be a trustworthy ally a couple of times.

The mission entailed heading south of the archipelago and toward the mainland. The riders' usual supply of limestone was running out, due to their constant manufacturing of Gronckle iron barricades and fortifications for use whenever the dragon hunters decided to take the fight directly to the Edge. Recently, a trader in the Northern Market had tipped them off about a vast quarry of limestone located on a continent he called Europe. Apparently this was the same continent Vikings had originally come from, but the place they were headed to was not this ancestral home.

From what they could gather from the trader, the trip to the mainland would take about a week if they flew nonstop. A week was not that long of a time span, and that was part of the reason why Hiccup felt it wouldn't be _too_ bad to leave the twins behind.

By the time the riders got back, though, _two_ weeks had passed since they'd left.

Ruff and Tuff had taken their responsibilities seriously, for once. They made sure the Night Terrors were on their lookout posts, they cleaned up any dust or dragon dung that built up in and around the various buildings, and even flew Barf and Belch on recon flights around the island when they had the spare time. They stayed on the island as much as possible, so they never encountered any dragon hunters. Even more surprisingly, Tuff minimized the amount of time he spent with Chicken and her family, preferring to use his spare time to make sure the base's defenses were still up and running. Fortunately, Chicken didn't mind, since as a mother of five, she had duties of her own.

Basically, the Edge was in surprisingly good shape when Hiccup and the others landed on the platform outside the stables. All of them looked around at their base with wide eyes, surprised that the place hadn't been leveled to the ground by now. They _did_ see that Snotlout's hut had been burned down ("The S! _Look_ at what they did to the S! I _knew_ this was an awful idea, Hiccup!"), but no-one besides Lout himself batted an eye. They were too impressed that only _one_ hut had been destroyed.

Soon after the gang had landed at the stables, Ruff and Tuff came running to greet them. "They're back!" shouted Tuff. "Oh, how we've missed you so! As you can see, we've done quite the arduous job taking care of the place. I mean, you might notice a few boars running around from when we forgot to lock up the boar pit, still trying to take care of that… oh, and we may have eaten all the food in the storehouse, so there's that…"

"And you burned down _my hut_ , care to explain that?!" demanded Snotlout.

"Snotlout, settle down, please?" Hiccup asked. While the Jorgenson boy grumpily folded his arms, Hiccup hopped off of Toothless and directly addressed the twins, "Sorry we're so late. It took longer than we expected to find the limestone supply the trader told us about."

"Not to worry, my young Hiccup," Tuffnut assured him, clapping him on the back for good measure. "Ruff and I were more than happy to have the time to ourselves, looking after the base. Our consciences would not be able to handle the guilt, had we ignored the undying trust you'd placed in us and neglected in our duties to keep our glorious land safe from the greedy hands of Traitor Johann."

"I thought of that one," chuckled Ruff, raising her hand. "It's a clever play on words, see, because –"

"We get it," Astrid drawled with a deadpan expression, unimpressed by the female Thorston's pun and unconvinced by her brother's flowery words.

"Oh yeah, the state of my hut _clearly_ demonstrates how much you care about this place!" Snotlout shouted.

"Eh, nobody's perfect," Ruff replied nonchalantly.

Rubbing his hands together, Tuff wandered over to the other riders. "So, if we're all done talking about us, how did the mission go? Those saddlebags are just bursting at the seams with limestone, I'd wager?"

"You'd better believe they are!" exclaimed Fishlegs, waddling over with a heavy basket full of rocks slung over each of his arms. "We have more than enough limestone to use in Gronckle iron production for the next few weeks."

"And not only that," Hiccup added with a wry smile, "but we've made more than our fair share of discoveries during our time on the mainland."

"Ooooh, did we ever!" Fishlegs said ecstatically, bouncing up and down with excitement.

"Uh, brother?" called Dagur, over on the far side of the platform where he was unloading his dragon's saddlebags. "Can we cut the chit-chat until we're all relaxing in the clubhouse? Sleuther's flown so far with these rocks that his wings are stuck open."

The other riders agreed that letting their dragons rest in the stables took precedence over recounting their adventures on the mainland. They all took turns unloading the saddlebags full of limestone and hauling them away to the (empty, thanks to the twins) food storage building. Another hour then passed as they pampered their dragons after the long and exhausting flight, brushing their scales clean and filling their troughs with food and water so that they'd remain content in the stables for a while. Once that was done and the dragons were settling down for a well-deserved nap, Hiccup led the group over to the clubhouse to elaborate more on the 'discoveries' they'd made.

"We found so many plants and animals we've never seen in the archipelago," Fishlegs was babbling, flipping through his notes and sketches. "And the limestone quarries were _so_ vast. I've never seen so much of it in my life!"

"Yep, his dragon definitely enjoyed our stay there," chuckled Dagur, to Fishlegs' embarrassment. "She ate so much that we had to wait another hour before heading home."

"Tell them about the stone dragon, Hiccup," Heather suggested, eyes glinting with excitement.

"Whoa, stone dragon?" asked Tuffnut. "I've never heard of a stone dragon before. They have dragons made of stone on the mainland?"

"Well, there were the Sentinels," mused Ruffnut. "Although those just _looked_ like they were made of stone."

In response, Hiccup reached into his satchel and pulled out a large, flat slab of limestone. He laid it flat on the table and gestured for the twins to come closer. Everyone else obligingly backed off so that Ruff and Tuff could get a good look.

The slab contained the skeleton of some kind of long-dead animal. It was about the size of a chicken, but the shape of the bones and the way they were arranged made the creature look like a flightless dragon such as a Speed Stinger. It had a long tail and long arms spread out on either side of it.

"It _is_ a stone dragon!" Ruff exclaimed, awed.

"But why is it, like, stuck in the rock like that?" asked Tuff, tapping the skeleton curiously.

Clearing his throat, Fishlegs explained, "Well, Hiccup and I have our own theories. It's most likely that this skeleton is what remains of a once-living dragon, and when it died, some rocks buried it and kept it in an undamaged state until we dug it out of the limestone deposit. As you can see, all the skin and flesh is gone, but the bones remain intact."

There was a cluck from elsewhere in the room, the sound of Chicken waddling in to see what all the fuss was about.

Picking up the slab and holding it up in front of his face, Tuff declared, "This is officially the second-coolest thing I've ever seen. After the Screaming Death, of course, that thing was awesome."

"Fourth-coolest," Ruff corrected him. "Remember the Submaripper and the Red Death?"

"Oh yeah, you're right, sis," he remedied. "Ahem… this is officially the fourth-coolest thing I've ever seen!"

As he held up the skeleton trapped in rock once again, Tuff paused, seemingly noticing something else about it. Wearing an expression of curiosity, he placed it back on the table and took a seat beside Hiccup so he could scrutinize it closely.

"Uh… is everything alright, Tuff?" the future Chief asked, hesitantly.

Tuff didn't reply at first, too focused on whatever it was he was seeing on the skeleton. Finally, though, he drew back from his close examination of the bones and sat up to address Hiccup. "Don't you notice something weird about this stone dragon, H?"

Confused, the other Dragon Riders clustered back around the limestone slab, trying to find what it was that had gotten Tuff's attention. But only when he pointed it out with his finger did they actually realize what he was talking about.

Around the stone dragon's arms and tail were a series of dark impressions that pressed slightly into the rock, feeling rough to the touch. They joined together to form rounded fans that stretched out from its long-dead hands and tail.

"Oh, _those_ ," said Snotlout, sounding dismissive. "I saw those too, they're not important. They're not even bones. What's so great about that?"

"Is it just me, or do those marks in the rock look a lot like feathers?" asked Tuff, completely ignoring the Jorgenson boy.

Blinking with surprise, Heather replied, "They do. I didn't realize it at first, but… I think Tuff's right."

A nervous sort of hum came from Fishlegs' part of the table. When everyone turned to look at the dragon enthusiast, he was tapping his pudgy fingers together and glancing everywhere at once – a classic indication that he was withholding some important information.

"Alright, what is it, Legs?" Hiccup asked resignedly.

"I _did_ notice those feather-like markings before, as a matter of fact," Fishlegs replied, reaching over to drag the limestone slab closer to him so he could run his hand over the rough impressions. "I found them highly unusual, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that if an animal's bones could become trapped in rock, then why wouldn't other parts of its body be preserved as well?"

"But there aren't _actually_ any feathers there, just markings that look like them," Astrid pointed out with a frown.

"Exactly! The feathers would've pressed into the rock and made these impressions when the dragon was buried, which were left behind when the feathers themselves deteriorated," Fishlegs lectured, over the sound of Snotlout yawning exaggeratedly.

Shaking his head with disbelief, Hiccup stated, "Okay, so let's say Fishlegs is right and those are the remnants of feathers. There aren't any dragons we've ever seen that actually have feathers. We should ask ourselves, is this even a dragon at all?"

"Birds _are_ the only creatures in the animal kingdom to have feathers," Ruff supported further. And she should know, as she had to listen to her brother talking about birds almost every night while he studied Chicken and her offspring before bed.

"Yes!" proclaimed Tuffnut, pounding a fist into his palm. "Emphatically yes! Riddle me this, my fine fellow – if it is not a dragon, due to the presence of feathers, and it is not a bird, due to the structure of its clearly reptilian skeleton, then what say you? Be it a dragon, or a bird?"

For a moment, no-one spoke, too astounded by the normally stupid Thorston boy's eloquent usage of complex Norse words.

Then Dagur, of all people, spoke up. "Why can't it be both?" he asked, shrugging nonchalantly. "Doesn't seem so implausible to me, I mean, not after all the other weird things we've seen."

"I do have another theory about that, actually," Fishlegs stated, somewhat smugly. He stood up and went on, "Remember the Speed Stinger we rescued, and how it developed webbing to run on water? Well, this particular species might have evolved feathers in much the same way. And if the skeleton is as old as my calculations say it is, then this might've happened long before humans, or birds, or any of the dragon species we know today even existed."

There was more silence as the riders drank this in and digested it.

"So, if you're saying what I think you're saying," Ruffnut began slowly, rubbing her chin in deep thought, "then this dragon lived so long ago in the past that it was the first animal of its kind to grow feathers and fly."

"Y-Yeah," Fishlegs said, shocked that she'd reached that conclusion so easily. "That's pretty much it."

Tuffnut stood up all of a sudden, planting his hands on the table. "So wait, if your theory is correct, then that means…"

"Birds evolved from dragons?!" finished Ruff, a wide grin spreading across her face.

"Ba-QWAAAAK!" Chicken let out a loud squawk.

Spinning around to lift his pet in his hands, Tuff shouted with glee, "Chicken is a bird! And that can only mean one thing!"

"Oh gods…" Hiccup muttered, facepalming.

"Is he serious?" Snotlout questioned.

" _Chicken is also A DRAGON!_ " the Thorston boy hollered.

"Buk BAWWWWWK!" Chicken agreed.

"He is," deadpanned Astrid.

Overjoyed, Tuff threw Chicken up into the air with a cry of excitement, then caught her and spun her around. "We must begin your training immediately, my avian sidekick! Of course, we'll begin with simple drills with the hand signals, then work our way up to flying on command, formation flying, breathing fire, formation flying _while_ breathing fire on command…"

The male Thorston walked out of the clubhouse, Chicken tucked under his arm, while still talking excitedly to himself. Ruffnut rushed out after him, eager to see what shenanigans were about to go down. Everyone left behind just stared after them, wide-eyed and completely speechless.

"That… happened, right?" Fishlegs asked, after a moment.

"I'm not sure," Heather replied, sounding dazed.

"Muttonheads," muttered Astrid.

-.-.-.-.-.

 **So yes, that's an Archaeopteryx skeleton, in case anyone was confused. The original specimen was found preserved in limestone in Germany.**

 **In the mobile game "Rise of Berk", you can get Chicken as one of your "dragons" whenever she appears in the market during special events. And Chicken appears in the Dragon Eye during the final season's opening, so… Chicken is secretly a dragon, confirmed.**

 **If you also think Chicken should be a dragon, then please review! Thanks for reading, dear readers!**


	2. Omake

**Of Chickens and Fossilized Bones**

 **Omake**

 **Just something special I wanted to add. Enjoy. ;)**

 **UPDATE: Thanks to milenalupin for pointing out that this is technically an omake, not a deleted scene. I appreciate the feedback!**

-.-.-.-.-.

Hiccup walked towards the dragon training ring, shaking his head. Tuffnut had been spending all his free time in here for the past week, ever since his " _grand epiphany_ " about Chicken actually being a dragon. And with the dragon hunters rapidly closing in on the final Dragon Eye lenses, it was time for the Thorston boy to stop Loki-ing around with his delusions and –

An explosion suddenly shook the ground, startling the one-legged Viking into stopping dead in his tracks. Toothless perked up with alarm and roared, noticing the plume of black smoke rising into the air above the training arena.

"Oh, someday those Thorstons…" Hiccup muttered to himself after shaking off the initial fright. He stomped the rest of the way to his destination and entered, opening his mouth to give Tuff a piece of his mind…

…only to see a chicken the size of a Night Fury standing in the middle of the arena with Tuff perched on its back.

"Hey, glad you could join us, H!" he called out with a cheery wave, totally missing Hiccup's open-mouthed expression. "Did you want us for something? Chicken and I were just finishing up our target practice!"

With that, Chicken opened her beak and coughed out a plasma blast that vaporized the last stack of barrels on the other side of the arena, sending another cloud of smoke up.

"Buk-gawk buk-GAAAWWWWW!" Chicken crowed triumphantly.

Hiccup opened and closed his moth in pure shock, doing his best expression of a stranded codfish. He slapped his cheeks with his palms a couple of times – no, it didn't look like he was dreaming. And unless someone had slipped dragon nip into his food again, he wasn't hallucinating either.

Before his flabbergasted eyes, the giant poultry scratched at the ground and pecked at the ashes the barrels had left behind. She found a charred mackerel and gulped it down like a kernel of corn. Then she burped, accidentally shooting another plasma blast into the air, where it vanished from sight.

That was too much for poor Hiccup's broken mind to take. He turned around and stumbled back out of the arena in a daze. He needed some quiet time in his hut, and maybe a week-long nap. Maybe then things would go back to normal.

"Huh, wonder what that was about," Tuff commented, hopping off of Chicken's back. "So, uh, T. Now that dear Chicken's part Night Fury, you wanna hang around? Maybe give us some Night Fury pointers?"

Toothless warbled, nodding eagerly. Normally he'd be loyally following his rider, but Hiccup would surely forgive him if he made an exception this time. After all, Chicken had suddenly become much more interesting than he'd originally thought…

Somewhere in the distance, Snotlout could faintly be heard screaming something about his S.


End file.
